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IE7 Will Have Tabbed Browsing
loconet writes that early yesterday morning, "Dean Hachamovitch, IE product unit manager, confirmed that IE7, like Opera and Firefox first did years ago, will have tabbed browsing as one of its new features. Asa Dotzler,from Mozilla, points out that Dean reminds IE users who have not upgraded to XP that tabbed browsing can be added to IE through 3rd-party add-ons." cryptoz adds a link to this InformationWeek story which says that the tabs will be very "'basic' due to fears from Microsoft that tabbed browsing might scare off too many users. The feature is only being included because IE is slipping in the browser share market."
How soon until MS Office gets tabs? I for one often have up to a dozen Word and Excel documents open and having them all in the task bar is a pain in the UI.
a world in progress...
My father can hardly install his own software and calls me all the time with *simple* questions. When I moved him to Firefox and showed him the tabs, he thought that was the best thing about the browser. Once again Microsoft demonstrates that they are very out of touch with the average computer user.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
If I ever tried to remove MSN Messenger, delete the files and everything, like dark fucking magic everything would reappear and launch if I ever visited a MSN-site with MSIE.
I had to insert dummy-executables in the MSN Messenger directory to get rid of it. However, editing the registry to tell Windows that MSN Messenger wasn't there would also magically cause a reinstall just out of nowhere.
So I let Windows believe the dummy executables were MSN Messenger which were still techincally "installed". That and only that did it for me.
Seems like you got off easy, you lucky bastard!
The way windows constantly tries to battle the user, if he actually dares to defy the devine intensions of Redmond... *shudder* It's really all you need to know about the OS and the vendor.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Why then can Solaris,Linux,BeOS, QNX access the internet without a integrated browser installed? Why could you uninstall IE 3 without serious harm?
You mean, you tried to remove some spyware app, but because you couldn't it's therefore IE's fault.
Well since ActiveX component technology is what allows these programs to become part of IE, I say hell yeah it's IE's fault, to an extent. A burglar is not the homeowners fault per say. But if you place a note on the door saying "no one is at home the key is under the mat", your doing everything short of asking known robbers to steal from you. The back-end http protocol handlers are reused by every application (well, those that don't want to reinvent the wheel)
A shared library is not a program! A DLL that cannot be changed or written over by any program would not allow a virus or malware and still provide your code reuse.
I don't get it. Really. I just don't get it.
Years ago, MS told us that the multiple-document interface was bad because users supposedly weren't able to deal with it. Then they stepped back and reintroduced it in their next office update. Now IE is going to get MDI in the only way that really is usable: with tabs.
But that's not the point that I'm not getting. Pondering the best, most usable solution is a good thing. Even if it takes a couple of years. Even if it's done by Microsoft. No. What I don't get is the apparent hypocrisy.
Whether a browser is safe and usable isn't only determined by such in-your-face features as boring ol' tabs. Have you ever tried to tweak IE's options? Whether you are a complete noob or somebody that has been admining Windows machines for the last ten years, the options dialog is one part of IE that makes you run away screaming for you mommy.
Options with labels that are hard to understand (to put it mildly) that are caved into a too small dialog that cannot be resized. I don't know how much of this is due to a very bad localization. But the German version actually features an option that you could back-translate to "Enable page transitions". Help item: "Determines whether Internet Explorer will blank the current page and display the next page when you leave a page." Huh?
If somebody really thinks that tabs might make IE a substantially better browser, he hasn't used it yet.
Well, generic-man you are a getting attacked from all sides, but I'll agree with your point.
From a UI Designer/Nazi standpoint, Tabs are a really bad thing -- they are a totally inconsistant form of window management that is only used in one type of application. They defeat the normal applicaiton switchers (taskbar, dock, expose, alt-tab). They aren't quite SDI and aren't quite MDI, and MDI is supposed to be dead anyway. Firefox tabs in particular are bad because you are locked the Z Order based on how you opened them and have no control over how or where they appear.
That having been said, Tabs are damn useful, and I love them!
I noticed that Apple Safari has tabs but disables them by default. That lends credence to the idea that Tabs really are scary to non-power users.
Microsoft has a Tabbed Browser called ".NET SDK Documentation". Rather than being "basic", you can drag-n-drop the tabs and Z-Order works. In other words, they're more advanced than Firefox tabs and hopefully that's what they'll use for IE7.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
it seems everyone who has replied so far hasnt used opera and wonders what's so great about it. (And one person who says he prefers firefox because it has a feature... which opera also has)
Firefox's tabbed browsing is a set of buttons with a tabbed look which swap the active URL (*I know it's not as simple as just that, no use pointing that out). Opera on the other hand is a full MDI- something which OSS programs seem to all be against for some reason (usually saying "the window manager should handle that"). The MDI allows you to resize individual windows (call the websites which pop-up small windows for logins poorly-designed, but they still exist, and it's helpful to support them), view multiple pages simultaneously under a single window, view pages at multiple resolutions (good for editing), basically it's multiple browser windows contained within another browser window. It really is much better done than Firefox's method (whether or not you prefer one or the other, Opera's you can do more with and you can still use it the way firefox works if you want to).
And just to get this out there: I dont use Opera. I used to, but switched to firefox when Opera starting crashing every five seconds (this is not a problem I've heard anyone else complain of)
I think Opera looks better (well, looked better, they tend to revamp the entire UI every release, it probably looks like a small nobbed ball covered in pulsating yellow fibers by now), and has a much better focus on usability. That's to be expected: It's a product for sale, it's going to have a better UI.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Funny how quickly MS's stance changes. I have 6 more months to go with my prediction. Let's see if I make it in time! :)
Features such as tabbed browsing are not important to IE users 11/12/04